Category Archives: Race

Can Anna Wintour survive fashion’s reckoning with racism?

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While Condé Nast has said the Vogue editor-in-chief will not be stepping down, turmoil has been mounting as employees past and present speak out

For decades she has stood astride the fashion industry, micro-managing the look and content of US Vogue, marshaling a significant part of the global fashion industry to her worldview, and presiding over a annual gala which, at $25,000 a head, paying guests and favored courtiers mounted lavishly-carpeted steps of Metropolitan Museum of Art to symbolically kiss the ring.

But for Anna Wintour this has been her annus horribilis. New York fashion week has been written off, the Met Gala has been cancelled, magazine advertising revenues are plummeting and there are scarcely any frocks to shoot since the coronavirus barged its way into the European fashion shows in February.

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‘He just doesn’t get it’: has Trump been left behind by America’s awakening on racism?

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The killing of George Floyd has been a turning point for for everyone but the president – who has seldom been so isolated from his own party and the public

Longtime observers of Donald Trump have often compared him to an old man sitting at the end of a bar, holding forth with crazed opinions, overwhelming self-assurance and taboo-busting shock value guaranteed to draw a crowd.

Now, perhaps for the first time, it seems the US president may have lost the room.

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Trump says ‘concept of chokeholds sounds innocent’ as states move to ban practice – live

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That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Lois Beckett, will be taking over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

The Trump administration has finalized a rule rolling back Obama-era protections for transgender Americans under the Affordable Care Act’s non-discrimination policy.

According to the new version of the policy, the department of health and human services will be “returning to the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”

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Boris Johnson ‘stoking fear and division’ ahead of BLM protests

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Critics say PM’s claim that George Floyd protests ‘hijacked by extremists’ is dangerous

Boris Johnson was accused of “stoking fear and division” ahead of a weekend of Black Lives Matter demonstrations after he unequivocally condemned the removal of historic statues and claimed the protests had been “hijacked by extremists intent on violence”.

As statues – including of Winston Churchill – were boarded up to protect them ahead of planned marches, the prime minister tweeted his opposition to those calling for memorials with links to slavery and racism to be torn down.

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Five-year-old’s fatal plunge provokes hard questions about Brazil’s racism

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Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva fell nine storeys after being left alone by his mother’s employer, one of many richer white Brazilians employing black domestic workers

Mirtes Santana weeps when she remembers finding her son dying on the pavement outside the luxury seaside apartment block where she worked in north-eastern Brazil.

“I can’t bear it,” said the 33-year-old domestic worker. “It breaks my heart.”

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Racism is at the heart of fast fashion – it’s time for change | Kalkidan Legesse

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The fashion industry makes huge profits from the exploitation of black and brown women. Now is the time to call it out

Of all the shocks that the past few weeks and months have brought to all our lives, one of the biggest for me as a black woman working in the fashion industry is that finally people are realising that racism is more than calling someone a derogatory name.

The killing of George Floyd while in police custody and the global outrage and protest that followed is bringing a dawning collective understanding that white supremacy relies on the exploitation of black and brown people. 

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Harry Enfield says blacking up as Mandela was ‘so wrong it was right’

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On Radio 4’s Today programme, the comedian justified decision to portray former South African president in blackface

Harry Enfield has defended the use of blackface on television in an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme. In conversation with host Nick Robinson and fellow guest Ava Vidal, the comedian aimed to justify his decision to portray Nelson Mandela, describing it as “so wrong that it was right”.

Enfield, known for playing characters including Loadsamoney and Kevin the Teenager on television, said he had also used makeup to play an Indian soldier in a BBC programme, a decision he also deemed appropriate.

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Donald Trump to hold rally in Oklahoma, first since coronavirus pandemic began

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President announces rally in Tulsa, city with a history of deadly racial violence, even as Covid-19 cases continue to rise

Donald Trump will hold a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next Friday – his first since since states began shutting down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 110,000 lives in the US.

Related: Trump would 'not even consider' renaming bases with Confederate links

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What black America means to Europe

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Many have attempted to claim that ‘things are better here’ for black people than in the US. This ignores both Europe’s colonial past and its own racist present. By Gary Younge

In September 1963, in Llansteffan, Wales, a stained-glass artist named John Petts was listening to the radio when he heard the news that four black girls had been murdered in a bombing while at Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

The news moved Petts, who was white and British, deeply. “Naturally, as a father, I was horrified by the death of the children,” said Petts, in a recording archived by London’s Imperial War Museum. “As a craftsman in a meticulous craft, I was horrified by the smashing of all those [stained-glass] windows. And I thought to myself, my word, what can we do about this?”

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Trump to hold first rally in months in Tulsa, a city with history of deadly racial violence – live

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Hallie Golden reports for The Guardian:

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington has ordered a new investigation into the death of Manuel Ellis, an African American man who died more than three months ago in police custody, following questions over the independence of the investigation.

Related: Washington governor orders new investigation into police custody death

Lane was released after posting bond. His bail was set for $1m.

Lane was one of the officers — including Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng — who stopped George Floyd while responding to a call about the alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill.

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Toppling Edward Colston’s statue is unlikely to be enough to stop public anger

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Few imperial icons, including Churchill, will escape the need to reappraise Britain’s past

The toppling of slaver Edward Colston’s statue has electrified a longer term – and already deeply polarised – debate among British historians and academics, with some celebrating a “moment of history” as others warned of dark consequences for society.

Inaction over figures such as Colston had bred anger that would be felt “all over Britain”, said Andrea Livesey, a historian specialising in the study of slavery and its legacies and who described the events in Bristol as “wholly justified”.

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Fox News host talks race by calling out the real enemy: Sesame Street’s Elmo

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In response to a family-oriented CNN town hall on racism Tucker Carlson launched an attack on the much-loved furry red muppet

The rightwing Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched an unprecedented attack on the beloved Sesame Street puppet Elmo on Tuesday night, after Elmo and his father, Louie, discussed racism in a one-off town hall episode on rival channel CNN.

Related: Ocasio-Cortez condemns 'white supremacist sympathizer' Tucker Carlson

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Giving birth at home during Covid-19: ‘Black mothers were already scared’ – video

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Mekiya Hodges, who is African American and works as a social worker, says that pregnant women of colour often aren’t listened to by doctors. She had a traumatic experience giving birth to her previous children in hospital and, along with the additional risk of coronavirus, decided to have her daughter, Jordan, at home with the help of Natalie Watson, co-founder of Steel City Midwives. Mekiya, 25, lives in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an area that has a high death rate for new black mothers. Nationally, black women in 2018 were two and half times more likely than white women to die due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth


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‘Ten years of watching people die online has left me so angry’: young protesters on why they are marching

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The UK’s Black Lives Matter protests have been spearheaded by a new generation of activists. Six demonstrators from a recent London march reveal what brought them to the streets

The killing of George Floyd by a white police officer took place thousands of miles from the UK. But the 46-year-old’s cry in Minnesota that he could not breathe has sparked widespread protest in Britain. In the past two weeks, there have been demonstrations across UK cities. The protesters, the vast majority of whom were under 25, chanted: “No justice, no peace, no racist police” and “the UK is not innocent”. The demonstrations were largely organised through word of mouth and social media rather than established anti-racism groups.

Protesters carried handmade placards with the names of Mark Duggan, Sean Rigg, Julian Cole and others killed or left disabled by British police. They chanted for the Windrush generation, the victims of the Grenfell tower fire, and decried the high Covid-19 death rate among members of the BAME community.

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After 15 stunning days of anti-racist protests … what happens next?

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Can the phenomenal response to the police killing of George Floyd be channeled to secure lasting political change?

The New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb captured best the sense of wonder at what is happening on the streets of America. He posted a tweet from Mitt Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, which showed the former presidential candidate marching alongside demonstrators under the banner Black Lives Matter.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Cobb remarked. “This is what you call uncharted territory.”

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Calls for justice as George Floyd’s life celebrated at funeral in Houston – video

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George Floyd, the African-American man whose death in police custody roused worldwide protests against racism, was extolled on Tuesday as a symbol of the oppressed's struggle for justice at his funeral in his hometown of Houston, Texas. Family members and friends, most dressed all in white, stepped up to a microphone to describe Floyd as a loving, larger-than-life personality who deserved justice after his death while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers on 25 May

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Rev Al Sharpton: I have seen grandchildren of slave masters tear down slave master statues – video

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The Rev Al Sharpton gave an emotional eulogy at George Floyd's memorial service in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday. The civil rights activist celebrated the protests that have spread across the country and around the world in response to the police killing of Floyd. 'All over the world I've seen grandchildren of slave masters tearing down slave master statues,' Sharpton said and specifically referenced the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England, which was torn down and thrown into Bristol harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters

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Statue of 18th-century slave owner Robert Milligan taken down in London – video

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A statue of 18th-century slave owner Robert Milligan has been removed from its place in London’s docklands. The Canal and River Trust earlier said it was working with local authorities and a local museum to organise its safe removal.

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To be Black is to suffer perpetual wounds. Here’s how you can make a difference

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I grew up facing attack after attack on myself and others. Today each of us has a role in the fight for Black lives

I was nine when I was first called a n---- while walking to my mom’s car after school.

Ten when I watched the savage beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles police department on television. Eleven when I saw the flames and ashes of a city burning after four police officers were found not guilty.

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Neville Lawrence: black people still second-class citizens in Britain

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Exclusive: father of Stephen Lawrence says police’s promises to change have not been met

The father of Stephen Lawrence has said black people are still treated as second-class citizens in Britain, with police breaking promises to change made two decades ago after being shamed by the failure to find his son’s racist killers.

Neville Lawrence used a Guardian interview to back peaceful anti-racism protests, saying he was “pleased” by the mass marches sweeping the country, triggered by the US police killing of George Floyd.

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